Metered Access

Crain's Detroit Business is a metered site. Print and digital subscribers have unlimited access to stories, but registered users are limited to eight stories every 30 days. After viewing three metered stories, you'll be asked to register or log in. After eight more stories in 30 days, you'll be asked to subscribe.

Green card delays create problems for legal immigrants, employers

Visa rule change allows spouses to work

The Obama administration is relaxing a prohibition that prevents spouses of workers here on the H-1B non-immigrant visa from working. See story

2014 American Dreamers

In many ways, metro Detroit was built by immigrants. They left their homelands to escape war and persecution, to get an education or to seek more economic opportunity.

The American Dreamers profiled in this section have built professions and businesses across industries as diverse as they are, from restaurants to automotive, life sciences, venture capital and social services.

But their stories share a common theme: Hard work and persistence pay off.

Immigration bills to ease green card wait times have been drafted several times, but ultimately failed to pass U.S. Congress.

Left in a lurch are the legal immigrants seeking permanent legal status. Many wait as long as a decade for citizenship in the country where they are already working.

The immigration issue is now front and center in Michigan, as Gov. Rick Snyder is asking the federal government for 50,000 visas for highly skilled legal immigrants.

However, the current system is creating bottlenecks for legal immigrants and Southeast Michigan employers.

Tata Technologies Inc., the Novi-based subsidiary of India's largest conglomerate Tata Group, faces an arduous and expensive process for its India-born workers with no guarantees.

College degree-holding employees from India face longer wait times for a green card than any other nationality, as long as 12 years in some cases.

For Tata, this becomes a retention challenge as its India-born workers operate on a work visa that lasts only as long as six years.

Warren Harris

"The timeline for the work visa and green card process doesn't jibe, so occasionally we have those individuals that develop a crisis of confidence and head back to India," said Warren Harris, president and COO of Tata Technologies and a U.S. green card holder from the U.K. "This doesn't serve our company or this country."

The immigration bottleneck is a matter of supply and demand, with the government allowing 480,000 green cards for family-based applicants and 140,000 green cards for employer-based applicants. The employment-based green cards can be used only in situations where a qualified candidate in the U.S. is not available. The jobs must be approved by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Employment-based green cards are separated into five categories, from EB-1 to EB-5, based on certain skills and jobs.

The policy also states that immigrants from a single country can't exceed 7 percent of the total visas granted to immigrants annually, in each category. This means employer-based visas are limited to 9,800 per country. The limitations swing odds in favor of immigrants from small countries like Luxembourg (pop: 531,441) over countries with large populations like India (pop: 1.24 billion) and China (pop: 1.35 billion).

Employment-based applicants from India, China and the Philippines far exceed the 9,800 visa limit year after year and have created a backlog due to the restrictions.

A bachelor's degree-holding applicant from Mexico, for example faces an 18-month backlog. A bachelor's degree-holder from India faces a 10.5-year backlog.

Indian immigrants with an advanced degree, such as a doctorate, face a 9.5-year backlog.

The remaining preferences are reserved for athletes, professors and researchers; "special immigrants," which include religious workers, employees of U.S. foreign service posts, etc.; and green cards for investors who invest $500,000 in a targeted employment area. There is no backlog for those three employment-based preferences.

Marilu Cabrera, a public affairs officer for U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services in Chicago, said her office receives complaints but the limitations were assigned by Congress and implemented by the State Department.

"This is the way it exists right now," Cabrera said. "Not to say that it won't change, but once the visas are allocated, everyone else gets put into a waiting period."

Critics of current U.S. immigration policy want a change, and soon.

Amarnath Gowda, managing partner of the Farmington Hills-based Law Offices of Amarnath Gowda, specializes in visa petitions and said the current policy is "destroying families."

He said Indian immigrants in Southeast Michigan, and all over the U.S., are stuck in social purgatory while mired in the backlog.

"The stories I hear are unbelievable; they can't buy a home or plan for their children," Gowda said. "It's really quite sad."

Gowda said the daughter of a recent client has yet to be accepted to a hospital residency program despite graduating from medical school at the top of her class because her father has yet to receive his green card nearly 11 years after applying.

Plus, mortgage lenders aren't willing to facilitate a home loan to immigrants without a green card due to the threat of being forced from the country, Gowda said.

It's not just families feeling the pain of the policy; companies struggle with the rigidity and oversight, said Harris.

If the employer of an immigrant employee wants to change the location or job title of the person applying for green card status, more paperwork must be filed.

"The Department of Labor is very rigorous with the documentation requirements ... ," Harris said. "If an employee has to wait 10 years for a green card, there are typically job changes, location changes, etc.; the administrative overhead that exposes us to is really restrictive."

Harris said Tata Technologies sponsors only about eight to 10 green card applications annually due to the arduous process.

"The process is very bureaucratic and very expensive," Harris said. "If we had the benefit of a more streamlined process, not one that shouldn't be tough, but one that is less onerous, the companies and this country could benefit."

Tata Group is lobbying on Capitol Hill to remove the geographical limitations from the system and move into a first-come, first-served system like many European countries, Harris said.